


whatever we've got left

by bakhara



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, at least he's not short this go around, ed's really tired but it's fine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 05:03:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15332391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakhara/pseuds/bakhara
Summary: It's funny - they’d burned down their home as a symbol of never going back. And now here he is, ten years in the past, staring up at it.





	whatever we've got left

**Author's Note:**

> i don't why i'm doing this. enjoy, i guess.

The last thing he remembers is sitting in a bar with Mustang and Co. and wishing he was drunker than he was. Which, at the time, would have been a feat. And most likely a hospital trip. But feats and hospital trips were his forté - a fact that the people in front of him knew all too well. 

He remembers Mustang saying something smug and passing him a piece of paper - no, a journal. Many papers. And the snipe was about his code, something about it being easy, something about how he could crack it in an instant. Mustang’s own code makes him blush. He doesn’t like to look at it. He's a perverted old bastard, if you ask Ed.

Anyway, the guy hands him a journal and a pen. 

Havoc says, “C’mon Boss, we’re supposed to be celebrating. I thought you were done with all this alchemy stuff.” 

Whatever’s in his glass sloshes a little and Ed’s pretty sure there’s a no smoking sign on the door, but no one says anything about the cigarette in his mouth.

“Gee, thanks for the reminder,” he grumbles, but he doesn’t mean it. He’s been okay without alchemy. He thinks. Well, he’s been surviving, and that’s more than he can say for before. 

“Yeah, Havoc, wait to shove it in his face.” That’s Breda. Maybe. He’s begun to focus on the journal, not faces. Can’t do both at once right now. 

“Shut up, guys. M’thinking.” He scratches the pen against his head, and the lines snap into a clear image. 

He turns to Mustang, who suddenly has a grave look. Winry always says he wears his heart on his sleeve, and the Colonel must’ve seen its fear already. 

“Why’re you giving this to me now?” he asks, because it’s dark shit and he doesn’t want to deal with it. 

“...The investigation report is due tomorrow morning, and I haven’t had any luck.” 

Oh. That makes sense. There are bruises beneath his eyes and a pallor to his skin that’s even paler than usual. He looks sick. Tired. Edward takes pity, like the great human being that he is. He also takes note of his surroundings. Breda and Havoc have entertained themselves by bickering about girls, down the line of the bar. And Hawkeye is engaged with Furey - he has no idea what the two of them would even talk about. Probably Mustang. Gross. That just leaves the two of them buddied up, way down at the last two stools, in the corner. Ed bets he planned it this way, wanted his help from the start. 

He sighs. “What’s his M-O again?”

One of the Bastard’s eyebrows is quirked. “Having trouble concentrating, Fullmetal?” 

“I told you not to call me that,” he snarls, but the childish pout that it comes with disarms any venom. 

“Right. _Edward_ ,” he says, and Ed bets that if he wasn’t so damn blank, he would have rolled his eyes with the word. “As I said, he’s a freelance researcher. Murdered in his own home.”

He decides to ignore that (look at him, being all mature) and focus instead on the complex array. They always have to be complex, don’t they? They can’t ever just be a damn circle and some lines. Gotta have all that wiggly shit - the alphabets, and ancient letters, and...and something he doesn’t recognize. Which is strange, because he considers himself the world expert in alchemy. Next to Al. And maybe Hohenheim, but he has since...resigned that title.

“What?” asks Mustang, and when Ed fails to respond, “What is it?” 

He withdraws from the text after realizing how close he is, eyes to print. “I don’t know.” 

The grave face becomes graver, which is fitting, because he already looks like he’s dead. He squeezes the bridge of his nose for just a second. Weakling.

“It doesn’t seem like anyone does.” 

Ed sips his drink and gestures with one hand into the air. “Just touch the damn thing. Foolproof way to find out.” 

“Splendid idea, Fullmetal. I’ll just risk life and limb to…” His sentence peters out and he clears his throat. “Perhaps not the best phrasing.” 

Ed does roll his eyes, because he’s not a stupid bastard that cares what people think. 

“Oh now you pretend to be all sensitive about it.” 

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Yeah uh huh.” 

Mustang has that smug look again, which means there’s going to be fighting. Kind of rears Ed up. He loves a good fight, especially when he has Bachelor Party Immunity, which means that the Bastard’s team will at least let him get in one good punch. Winry’ll kill him if he turns up to their wedding with a black eye, though. So words it is. 

“Maybe if you had actually done as you were told, Edward, instead of making trouble in places you don’t belong-” a pointed look “-we wouldn’t have had any problems.” 

He drinks his drink with a look like that was a fucking checkmate, or something. 

“Yeah, blame the child. Not the bastard officer who took advantage of a dirty situation,” he bites, a little harder than he means to. 

The flicker of some kind of emotion (remorse, maybe?) is worth it, though. Sends a proud little smirk to his own face and his knuckles knocking on the wooden bar. It’s gotten quiet down the rest of the way. They’re doing that thing, where they listen but pretend not to. Look around as if the room’s very interesting all of a sudden and start talking lowly, so they can hear better over their own voices. He hates that thing. 

“You became responsible for yourself the moment you signed your certification, and you know that,” hisses the older man. “Or perhaps your hindsight is a little _short_.” 

“I’ve grown!” he insists, a little too loudly. “I’m just as tall as you are!” 

“Yes, and it seems that your brain has not caught up.” 

He’s half-standing on the stool now, one foot on the ground the other on its crux, fist still closed on the bar’s surface. His teeth are grit. He can never seem to register what ‘too loud’ is in the moment, even if somewhere in the back of his mind he knows that he is.

“Says the bastard who came to me for help! All you gotta do is man up and touch the fucking circle, Mustang!” 

He gives an example of touching the circle, shoving the book in the Colonel’s face and pressing calloused fingertips to the page with the other hand. He knows almost instantly that he shouldn't have done that. 

Edward Elric has many regrets. Human transmutation, not saying more to his father, Nina...But this is the first he considers not entirely his fault. Sure, maybe it’s a little reckless to imply that going around touching circles willy-nilly is safe, but he should have been an exception. And he also has alcohol to blame for half of that. Damnit, this is why he doesn’t like drinking. 

Anyway, the last sight he sees of the Amestris he knows is Mustang’s comically wide eyes and the panic of his stupid face. The roar of cries in the background. His glass shattering on the ground. The man's mouth forming words he doesn't have the concentration to lip read right now. 'Fullmetal', probably. And then things are white. 

He wishes he could have seen Alphonse one last time. Of course fucking fate decided that his brother would fall sick on that day. Would apologize profusely but still force Ed to go to his own ‘party’ or whatever. Al would have stopped him. This never would have happened. But along with the many regrets, at some point you learn that you can’t blame anyone but yourself. 

And so now here he is, staring at The Truth, with a primal fear that he thought he had long since shaken. 

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”


End file.
